Monthly column on hymns and songs

From time to time one of those seemingly eternal chestnuts surfaces in or around this third of the page. Why suffering? Where will it all end? Why are hymnwriters so greedy?

Leaving the first two for a moment, I approach the third with no particular complaint in mind. I write this months ahead, so if the letters column is bulging with outraged pastors, the coincidence is not of my making. Have we any defence?

A word, first, for the musicians. Unless you live in America or Spring Harvest, where the words are printed inside the music, your average congregation needs ten times as many words-only copies as full-music ones. So composers' royalties come in tens rather than in hundreds. Many of them live by their music. Fees for copying, performing, recording and so forth are their bread and butter. I hope we value their work.

Producer Dave Arnold says, 'There are 33,000 composers and musicians working in this country; only very few make vast amounts of money.' Pam Sheyne adds, 'We need to educate the public, particularly the younger generation, that earning a royalty is what is keeping that songwriter alive, hence... keeping music alive'. Like it or not, Christians are part of that picture, and also eat.

There are presumably greedy authors, as there are greedy golfers, teachers, bakers or pensioners. Or so I gather; I believe some of the horror stories. A Canadian Christian told me, 'You can make a living writing hymns over here - if they're bad enough!'

A tidy packet

So hymnwriters whose work is in demand could make a tidy packet. An extreme case is the late Fred Pratt Green, still better-known in the USA than in his native Britain, who set up a trust as soon as he realised what was happening. His generous foresight means that while he was content with the modest pension of a retired Methodist minister, the annual thousands paid into the trust benefit a wide range of hymn-related work, including research, bursaries, new projects, and the innovative library, the Pratt Green Collection at Durham.

Not everyone can do this, or needs to; but some whose work is published worldwide plough back their proceeds into good causes from evangelical literature for under-resourced churches overseas, to work nearer home. This is one way of repaying a local congregation for time spent in writing.

Even without this, writing has many hidden costs. If someone works from home, nobody else covers the overheads; somebody has to pay for hardware, software, heat, light, telephone, postage and travel. You may think of one or two 'successful' hymns; but the writer may have invested months of time in other work which gets nowhere. Good writers make paper mountains of drafts and revisions, shared with friends and advisers, long before you see anything on your screen or in your book.

If any writers still want to give their work away for nothing, a brief recall of Peter Sellers in Heavens above may make us think twice. It looks like a short cut to virtue; but if Christian artists gave away their pictures, Christian carpenters their furniture, and Christian greengrocers their sprouts... without having an economics degree you might foresee problems looming in your High Street. Or your Christian bookshop.

Still unconvinced? Attacks on integrity are sometimes very specific, so here is a personal bargain. If any church has a membership whose average household income is lower than mine, it may use free of charge anything I have written. This offer closes one year from now. But if you respond by email to this or any other preposterous claim in this column, I need your real address if you want a reply.

Christopher Idle

© Evangelicals Now - July 2002
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